American Hustle’s He-Men! Christian Bale on Squeezing His Man-Boobs, Bradley Cooper on That Jheri Curl

“My daughter had a lot of fun squeezing my boobies, but, uh, I never lactated,” said Christian Bale of the weight he put on for his role as a paunchy con man in American Hustle. He also shaved his head to achieve that comb-over, circa 1970s. “It’s a little bizarre, you know, when you see a guy with a bald head and kind of long hair dangling down the side like that,” Bale told VF Daily at the premiere on Sunday.

Of the ensemble cast in the David O. Russell film, Bale says that while the women looked good in their period costumes; he, Bradley Cooper, and Jeremy Renner all looked equally comical, with their wide lapels and gold neck chains. “It was like one of those gun standoffs, where everyone’s going to shoot each other. We were all just laughing at each other like we had guns to each other’s heads, but it was ones of laughter.”

Cooper’s curly locks in the film were his own, and it took three hours each day to get the look. “We thought that was the best way to do it, and I wound up loving it,” Cooper said. “I looked pretty goofy,” he added, but he didn’t have to face humiliation from friends and family, since only his dog, Charlotte, was with him during the shoot in Boston. “But once you wet it—I don’t know if you guys know—you wet it, and then the curls come out,” Cooper explained. “I’m a connoisseur on this.”

Amy Adams says that Cooper spent way longer having his hair done on set than she did. “But Christian takes the cake, because he had to live with that bald comb-over for months and months,” this month’s Vanity Fair cover girl said. “There was no returning to normal for Christian.”

Adams says she has warned her friends about her character’s looks in the movie. “I get a lot of texts, like, ‘Ooh, I saw a real racy picture of you in costume!’ So it’ll be really interesting to see their reaction to the film,” she told VF Daily.

They might be referring to her kiss with Jennifer Lawrence. “She’s a fantastic actress,” Adams said. “I came up with the idea; she figured out a way to sell it that was gross, and awesome, and toxic, and I just love her for that.”

Bale said that J. Law was “endlessly” funny. “The point with this film is nobody had to try to be funny,” he said. “There was no effort of, like, here’s the punch line, and here’s the nudge-nudge wink-wink. It’s the truth of the characters that was funny, that’s what makes it hilarious. And she’s just really talented. She created this wonderfully toxic relationship with my character, because the age is just—nothing’s right. This just shouldn’t happen, but she refuses to admit that, and she did just a beautiful job.”

Bale’s character is loosely based on Mel Weinberg, a con man who played a central figure in the Abscam scandal, an F.B.I. sting operation. Bale studied him to play the role. “He’s just a fascinating man,” Bale said. “Mel is just such a charming and wonderful storyteller, he’s got this comb-over, he’s got, you know, the paunch and everything, and I just found him to be so unexpected. I thought that this con artist was going to look like a very slick, suave, smooth, moneyed, vain man, and he’s not in the slightest. And I just became enamored of him completely.” (Let’s hope he didn’t ask Bale for money.)

After the Ziegfeld screening, everyone dashed through the snow to Cipriani 42nd Street for an after-party hosted by Vanity Fair and Grey Goose. The stars hung out on silver-hued couches evoking the 1970s. The crowd in the center of the space was so thick that Jeremy Renner, Amy Adams, and David O. Russell actually walked across the couches to extricate themselves, in order to grab a bite and greet friends.

Alessandro Nivola, who plays the prosecutor in the movie, just finished his Broadway run in The Winslow Boy), which, he says, resulted in a love match. His co-star in the play, Charlotte Parry, who was nearby, is now dating his brother, Adrian. “They met at opening night,” Nivola said.

The snowstorm in New York forced Jennifer Lawrence to take an early flight out of town, so she missed the premiere. But the inclement weather didn’t seem to dampen the party mood. Around midnight, the dance floor was suddenly packed. Shortly after, we spotted a barefoot Adams, shoes in her hand, making her way toward a side exit.